Friday, 25 January 2013

Three DH's at NZMS

The De Havilland DH82A Tiger Moth ZK-ANQ (c/n 82906) was constructed for the RAF and allocated the R5011 serial number before being sent out to NZ. It became NZ892 with the RNZAF and served between 23-07-1940 and 01-04-1947. It joined the NZ civil register as ZK-ANQ for T E Lawrence of Dargaville until moving to the Kaitaia Aero Club on 03-08-1948. It then had a succession of owners until joining Stuart Tantrum and storage at Pine Park from 14-02-1996. It was rebuilt by Stu's team at Omaka and joined the Omaka Collection on 01-07-2002 and more recently The Vintage Aviator Ltd from 01-07-2007.

Above. DH83C ZK-APT (c/n FM48) is a Canadian built Fox Moth which was listed to the Marlborough Aero Club on 12-11-1947. As you can imagine it has had a few owners and incidents over the intervening years. I believe it was grounded by the CAA in 1962 with the remains going to Stan Smith of Auckland in 1963. In the mid 1970's a batch of five new fuselages were built, with one going into a rebuild of ZK-APT. The original fuselage went to MoTaT to create a non flying exhibit.

It rejoined the register for G S and GA Smith on 07-04-2009.

It arrived at NZMS in formation with one of Stan's other DH types - the DH84 Dragon ZK-AXI.

Below is DH84 Dragon 2 ZK-AXI (c/n DHA2057). This was one of the examples built for the Royal Australian Air Force in early 1943. After serving with the RAAF as A34-68 it became VH-AEF in April of 1945. It came to NZ and became ZK-AXI on 14-07-1953 with Rolvin Airways of Palmerston North. Some owner later - on 23-04-1967 - it was damaged at Ardmore, was cancelled from the register and presented to MoTaT, and stored at Ardmore. Stan got hold of it and moved it to Dairy Flat and commenced a rebuild using wings obtained from Australia and Gipsy Major 10-2 engines.

All three were returning to their tie downs after the DH line up in front of the masses on 19-01-2013.